Using Bible Commentaries in the Classroom
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| Title: | Using Bible Commentaries in the Classroom |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Phillips, Gary, Patte, Daniel, Kittredge, Cynthia |
| Source: | Teaching Theology & Religion. Jan 2013 16(1):52-65. |
| Availability: | Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/ |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Physical Description: | |
| Page Count: | 14 |
| Publication Date: | 2013 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Descriptive |
| Education Level: | Higher Education |
| Descriptors: | Liberal Arts, Biblical Literature, Teaching Methods, Conferences (Gatherings), Clergy, Undergraduate Students, College Faculty, Theological Education, Discussion, Teacher Attitudes |
| DOI: | 10.1111/teth.12006 |
| ISSN: | 1368-4868 |
| Abstract: | This discussion of the goals and methods of teaching biblical literature is an edited transcription of a panel recorded at the 2010 Society for Biblical Literature conference. The panelists were asked to reflect on William Placher's recently published theological commentary on Mark as an example or test case of how one might use a biblical commentary as a classroom resource. Karl Barth wrote that insofar as their usefulness to pastors goes, most modern commentaries are "no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary." What value might commentaries have for our students, whether future pastors or undergraduates in the liberal arts? While the panel consisted of teachers of undergraduates as well as theological students, the emphasis of the presentations and subsequent discussion focused mostly on theological formation. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2013 |
| Accession Number: | EJ996189 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwGOrQzg05rlN8AQPnf7kKkKAAAA4TCB3gYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHQMIHNAgEAMIHHBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDP4OiGIpXZ7iFYAdgwIBEICBme4i21ZsC6nzaROSuRRRxmG8MK_n6F-TmH-aUf_RbqzHRDJkZU3K9B_Y5G-aocxBvZEF_KLUnt6QVhaZZ5tLzTQVaxIb_VHKy3Tn6WGPYLGDb1JBp2kURaK8pcfg4AhYN1kH9Wa8bvJ8sWhvWvuZlFcIwGRJSkcFuZdyW3AdiawguET8hGPqP3Z0cRmcvNcOBVRkvfyXEYw02Q== Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0084578608;7qh01jan.13;2018Jul03.10:47;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0084578608-1">Using Bible Commentaries in the Classroom. </title> <p>This discussion of the goals and methods of teaching biblical literature is an edited transcription of a panel recorded at the 2010 Society for Biblical Literature conference. The panelists were asked to reflect on William Placher's recently published theological commentary on Mark as an example or test case of how one might use a biblical commentary as a classroom resource. Karl Barth wrote that insofar as their usefulness to pastors goes, most modern commentaries are “no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary.” What value might commentaries have for our students, whether future pastors or undergraduates in the liberal arts? While the panel consisted of teachers of undergraduates as well as theological students, the emphasis of the presentations and subsequent discussion focused mostly on theological formation.</p> <p>biblical literature; Bible commentaries; teaching strategies; learning designs; reading assignments; use of textbooks; learning goals</p> <p>Our topic today is how and whether professors should assign a Bible commentary in their courses. The faculty assembled for our panel come with substantial experience teaching the Bible in undergraduate, seminary, and doctoral programs. The variety of different settings, student populations, and teaching goals presents significant pedagogical challenges and opportunities to instructors, not the least of which is deciding which texts can best advance the teaching and learning work appropriate for the students who study the Bible in those settings. Is the theological commentary an appropriate text for the undergraduate classroom? If so, how might it be deployed and to what student learning end? Because of its genre, does the commentary occupy a privileged and not‐to‐be‐interrogated place in the seminary setting, assumed to be an authoritative word on the Bible, to which teacher and student can appeal to resolve textual ambiguities, answer nagging questions, and settle theological disputes? Does the theological commentary function differently in a doctoral program, as a form of critical, theoretical work used to unsettle and challenge students, to complicate interpretive issues, to mark the impossibility of finalizing conversation about and with texts like the Bible that live in our cultural bones and matter deeply to our identities? What difference does the teaching and learning context make in determining how commentary works and what conversations it promotes?</p> <p>To approach this question somewhat differently, Karl Barth poses a pointed question when he asks: Is the modern commentary even a first step toward commentary and conversation? (The Epistle to the Romans, Oxford University Press, 1968, 6). Barth challenges us to consider what it means for a commentary to be commentary and, for our purposes, what we are to make of it in the classroom setting. Simply put, what value does modern commentary and the genre of commentary more broadly have for our work teaching the Bible to students inside and outside the classroom in a range of teaching settings, and what do we imagine we are accomplishing with it? These are important pedagogical questions that will occupy us in today's forum.</p> <p>The focus of our conversation today is William C. Placher's posthumously published commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the inaugural volume in Westminster John Knox's series Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). Nearly two years ago to the day (in November 2008) the Wabash and wider theological communities were shaken by the news that our beloved Bill – teacher, scholar, faculty leader, and churchman – had suffered a fatal heart attack while on sabbatical leave at St. Johns University to work on the very book we discuss today. The final printed book is very nearly the text he left with only minor bibliographic and copyediting changes later provided by the editors. In addition to being a fabulous teacher known for taking seriously his students and the subject matter of theology in a liberal arts context, Bill was a superb writer and thinker. As Raymond Williams – Bill's mentor, close friend, teaching colleague, and literary executor – often says, Bill's drafts were uniformly better than the final copy produced by almost anyone else, and he of course is right. We owe Raymond and Nadine Pence, Director of the Wabash Center, a great debt of gratitude for the labor of love in seeing Bill's last book through to publication.</p> <p>Bill's manuscript was nearly complete. All that remained to be written was his “personal epilogue.” Alas, and eerily like Mark's gospel itself, Bill's commentary lacked a concluding final word. Discussing Mark's empty tomb scene in 16:1–8 and its much‐contemplated ending, Bill, the quintessential liberal arts professor, comments with a line borrowed from Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, King Lear. He poses to his readers the unsettling question: “Is this the promised end?” Spoken by Kent upon seeing Lear bearing the body of his dead daughter Cordelia, the question haunts and accuses. We are invited to wonder: Is Mark's empty tomb – or Bill's incomplete commentary – the promised end? Is this it, or is there more to come? And who provides the next or the last word? Like Mark's first readers, Bill's readers are left to their own devices to make sense of death, loss, promise, and incompleteness, and to decide what next to do, with nobody to ask and nobody at hand to guide. Commenting on the Gospel writer's creative use of paradox and negation as a meaningful strategy for addressing today's readers of the Bible, Bill writes: “[I]t is just these features of Mark that make a particular appeal in our age of uncertainty, when a Gospel that ends with Christ triumphantly present is harder to reconcile with the horrors of the world around us and the doubts within us. Mark throws the ball to us, as he did to his first readers. The three women run away silent, but we have heard the story; it is up to us, in our lives and testimony, to tell it and keep it alive” (2010, 248).</p> <p>Is it possible that one of those devices for making sense that enables us to decide what next to do to keep the biblical story alive in the classroom is the theological commentary? Can the theological commentary serve as a pedagogical propadeutic that tosses the ball? Notwithstanding Barth's uncertainty about the modern commentary, we do go on reading, teaching, and learning, attempting to make sense of and with our questions about the Bible and the stories that have been passed down to us. We know all too well that Mark's gospel, a commentary on the death and life of Jesus that some scholars suggest was composed at the very moment Rome was leveling Jerusalem, leaves the reader hanging. This unsettling end has spawned numerous next words and endings, commentary which you can find in the body of the gospel text itself or buried in footnotes, depending upon the tradition, translation, and editor. I have often wondered whether the response to Mark's paradox is to provide endings to the story, whether in footnotes or the body of the text itself. This is a way for readers to reintroduce the absent body Mark's narrative strives so dramatically to make disappear, a sort of proxy literary remains of a Jesus who urgently insists that the disciples leave the empty tomb behind and get on with their travel to Galilee. That was one way to get on with it. But, to get on with what, and with whom, and toward what end? With reading, making sense, commenting, and living. Readers, like texts, abhor vacuums, and we fill them with endings, footnotes, and other texts – commentaries like Mark's on the life and death of Jesus, and Bill's on Mark's suffering witness. In so doing readers strive to make their own statements, fashion their own endings, and get on with the difficult human work of dealing with senseless experiences. So,</p> <p>Perhaps theological commentary fills the empty space.</p> <p>Perhaps theological commentary passes the ball and enables a story to continue.</p> <p>Perhaps theological commentary calls for heightened, real conversation and action.</p> <p>Perhaps theological commentary enables us to get on with it.</p> <p>Possibly these statements about theological commentary underscore the need to raise wider questions about teaching and learning the Bible in the classroom: What goals do we set for our classes (are theology courses fundamentally distinct)? How do we seek to accomplish them with our students (how significant are the differences between undergraduates, seminarians, and doctoral students)? How is student learning about the Bible advanced by the choice of a theological commentary as compared to some other kind of interpretive text (film, for example)? What are we expecting students to do with the deep and disturbing questions such difficult work demands (learn how to live with the questions, or perhaps generate answers for themselves)? By repeatedly returning to these enduring questions about reading, endings, commentary, living, and dying we may very well be keeping alive the core human concerns that the Bible and theological reflection tosses to us. But it is time I toss such questions to my fellow panelists.</p> <hd id="AN0084578608-2">Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University</hd> <p>I welcome this conversation on the goals and methods of teaching the Bible, using William Placher's recent theological commentary on Mark as an example and resource for the classroom. But first I want to take exception to the quotation attributed to Karl Barth that most modern commentaries are “no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary” insofar as their usefulness to pastors goes. I would argue that this is because pastors are not appropriately trained in biblical studies and therefore do not know how to read commentaries of whatever kind, including theological commentaries such as William Placher's commentary on Mark. This is why, several years ago at Vanderbilt, we started a PhD program in Theology and Practice (with the generous help of Lilly Endowment), in which several of my seminars are included. The purpose of the program is to deliberately train future teachers in biblical studies to teach their students – be they future pastors (the primary goal of the program) or undergraduates – to recognize and assess the interpretive choices involved in any biblical interpretation. The program teaches students to recognize the analytical, theological, and contextual choices involved in any interpretation.</p> <p>What value might commentaries have for our students, whether future pastors or undergraduates in the liberal arts? I would argue that commentaries have an immense value, if students read these commentaries as having made specific choices:</p> <p>specific analytical choices (i.e., having chosen to emphasize as most significant one or another feature of the text);</p> <p>specific theological or hermeneutical choices (i.e., having chosen to emphasize certain theological themes related to the text, and having chosen one of the plausible understandings of each of these theological themes);</p> <p>specific contextual choices (i.e., having chosen to address certain contextual issues by means of their analytical and theological choices because these contextual issues are perceived as pressing on the concrete cultural, social, economic, political situations in which the texts were written).</p> <p>Similarly, any theological formulation is contextual – including, and especially, the theologies which pretend to be a‐contextual or universal. Similarly we should acknowledge that:</p> <p>any biblical interpretation is contextual (involving choices marked by a context);</p> <p>any biblical interpretation is theological (involving theological and hermeneutical choices);</p> <p>any biblical interpretation involves lifting up as most significant a certain aspect of the text.</p> <p>Biblical scholars make these analytical choices explicit by choosing one exegetical method or another, any of which will focus the interpretation upon specific features of the text.</p> <p>For many years, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we struggled with the problems of the ethics of biblical interpretation. I have abandoned the use of a single textbook for my introductory courses on the Bible (or any other courses on the New Testament that I teach), because, in one way or another, each offers itself as the basic, factual, presentation and necessary way to understand the singular, universally true, meaning of the text. Using a single commentary has the same effect, even if the commentator underscores that the commentary is presenting one among several plausible and legitimate interpretations (and therefore not the single, universally true interpretation).</p> <p>So if I were to consider how Bill Placher's theological commentary might function in my classroom, I would say that it would have exactly the same role as any other commentary – whether it be an historical critical commentary, or a commentary emphasizing the literary and narrative character of Mark, or the socio‐political character of Mark, or the rhetoric of Mark, or the apocalyptic figures of Mark, or Mark as a religious discourse comparable to other religious discourses of the time, or a contextual commentary that emphasizes the reception of Mark in different contexts. Although Placher's commentary has the advantage of underscoring interpretations of Mark by theologians through the centuries, nevertheless it will have exactly the same role as any other commentary in my class.</p> <p>When I use a plurality of commentaries in a class on Mark, my pedagogical goals are to mentor students to become responsible readers of the gospel, with a solid knowledge of its text. I show them that as readers of this Gospel each of us has the ethical obligation to account responsibly for the great variety of interpretations which we encounter. Both undergraduate and seminary students will learn:</p> <p>to understand how Christian believers interpret the Gospel of Mark as scripture, beginning with its first interpretations in Matthew and Luke continuing to the present day (including through class exercises);</p> <p>to recognize that all scholarly commentaries also presuppose a certain view of Mark as scripture (that they implicitly sponsor or reject), and thus make and advocate certain theological choices;</p> <p>to appreciate the role of religious, cultural, and social contexts in any interpretation, and the ways in which the interpretations are shaped to meet certain contextual needs;</p> <p>to know and appreciate the analytical choices through which each given interpretation views as most significant specific features of the text of the gospel – in scholarly interpretation through the use of a specific exegetical method, be it historical, sociological, literary, rhetorical, or history of religion method.</p> <hd id="AN0084578608-3">Cynthia Kittredge, Seminary of the Southwest</hd> <p>I confess my initial envy when encountering Placher's book and the series of which it is part: why should theological commentary on books of the Bible be restricted to theologians? – as though biblical scholars did not do theological work!</p> <p>As a biblical scholar I regret the undercurrent that dismisses and under‐appreciates the work of Bible scholars, when Placher's own work is thoroughly indebted to insights from biblical scholars' literary‐critical studies of Mark's gospel, the political placement of Mark in the first century imperial context, feminist work on gender in the gospel, and appreciation of the genre and narrative arc of the gospel.</p> <p>One very positive feature of Placher's book is the way he begins by placing the commentary in contemporary space and time. He asks, Why read Mark now? He tells a story of showing his students an image of an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib and they respond by saying, “That looks like Jesus.” He places this commentary in the context of empire and violence, with a violent death at the center of the story.</p> <p>How might this book function in my “Introduction to the Bible Course?” I teach a history and hermeneutics course that includes both the Hebrew scriptures and New Testament. It is our first year “Bible plunge.” This is a course for theological students who are preparing for ministry, where the text will be interpreted for preaching and teaching. We work very hard in all our courses to describe the circle of interpretation, so that students will be able to use whatever scholarship they encounter critically. Thus, we distinguish between literary explorations of the world of the text, historical reconstructive work in the world behind the text, the long and important history of interpretation in the world in front of the text, and meaningful reading of the text in the present.</p> <p>This book could be used to illustrate and analyze the perceived disciplinary split between biblical scholarship and theology. This division is something students experience in their first encounter with biblical studies, as well as in different disciplinary approaches between me and my colleagues in systematic theology. Placher's dialogue with Buber, Barth, and Augustine could be used to show the weighty history of theological interpretation of the text.</p> <p>Using a book such as this in another course I teach, “Biblical Interpretation for Preaching,” prompts some hesitation in me. The impression this book creates is that the author is a sensitive theologian who has figured Mark out and come to rest in a certain way in selecting and commenting on this gospel. However, in this course, I do not want students to have come to rest. I want students to wrestle with the text of Mark, experience the patterns and the style and the parables and deeds of power, and discover for themselves, in the process of looking things up and reading, how this gospel works. I want them to learn the kinds of methodological questions scholars ask and the kinds of questions they would ask. For example, a scholar might ask, “what is the genre of this text?” or “was this passage a part of the original text?” Why would they want to know the text's genre, and what is at stake in that question? What questions are they asking, and does the scholarly commentary address those? I want them to come to see for themselves how it is or is not valuable – first for the interpretive, and then for the preaching task.</p> <hd id="AN0084578608-4">Kenneth Ngwa, Drew Theological School</hd> <p>I teach at Drew Theological School, a United Methodist institution with a very diverse student body. It is a progressive school that is deeply concerned with training ministers and teachers to develop an interpretive ethic of social engagement, transformation, and social justice. The institution is constantly expanding its understanding of service, engaging the complex and diverse manifestations of religion in the world. One of the developments that has fostered this thinking was the creation in 2006 of a center for Christianities in Global Contexts (CCGC), funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. This means not only that the School seeks to recruit students from all over the world, but also that cross cultural trips to different parts of the global South and East, taken by M.Div. students, become vital learning experiences for contextual analyses and hermeneutics. Consequently, the classrooms are diverse not just ethnically and racially, but also in terms of theological commitments. It is very interesting to be in conversation with students in this sort of context.</p> <p>When I use a commentary in my classroom, I try to use more than one, often preferring an edited volume, so as to create and illustrate the sense of multiple voices “contained” in a single book. For example, I have used readings from The Africana Bible (Fortress Press, 2009), a commentary that draws on the works of authors from different socio‐political and cultural contexts, even as it is framed along the theory of Africana studies.</p> <p>Different commentaries do different things, and as a teacher I help students to learn some of the methods of interpretation that scholars use, including the historical‐critical method, narrative criticism, cultural criticism, and reader‐response. I see the commentary as a text in itself, and also as an intertext that interacts not just with the verse‐by‐verse literary text of the Bible, but also with several texts: other ancient near eastern texts, oral and written traditions, and theological traditions of the interpreter. A commentary therefore provides an opportunity for students to engage the biblical text in its literary and linguistic details, but to also think about the larger socio‐cultural and political pretext conditions from which the biblical stories emerged, the intertext (how some biblical texts are re‐interpretations of other biblical texts; for example, how in 1 Chron. 21:1, the Chronicler retells the story of David's census in 2 Sam. 24:1, and in the process attributes the motivation to Satan instead of the divine anger), and the posttext (how the text under consideration is received and/or resisted in different academic and religious communities).</p> <p>One of the things that I found particularly interesting in Placher's commentary is that he is very intentional about how the biblical text functions in different communities. That is how he uses his wide ranging knowledge of the history of interpretation in theology, philosophy, literature, and film. Placher's commentary creates a conversation between multiple communities and scholarly disciplines, and is in that sense a modeling of an interdisciplinary method of interpretation. Students at the beginning stages of their education often remark that the many critical methods of interpretation do not easily or apparently translate into the church. Placher's commentary addresses this concern and helps us think about how we might strengthen the conversation around how knowledge is created and used in the classroom and in the church. This commentary is an attempt to put these two sites of knowledge production in conversation. And despite Placher's reference to Barth (that modern commentaries are no commentary at all, but merely a first step toward a commentary), what we have in Placher is ultimately an attempt to understand knowledge production (through commentary) not simply in terms of linear progression and transition from the classroom to the church house, but rather in terms of organic polyphony.</p> <hd id="AN0084578608-5">Seung Ai Yang, Chicago Theological Seminary</hd> <p>I teach New Testament at Chicago Theological Seminary which is considered one of the more liberal seminaries in North America. Our student body is very diverse not only in race, ethnicity, gender, class, and generation, but also in terms of denomination and sexual orientation as well. And we now even have some Muslim, Jewish, and atheist students. In addition, most of our students are strongly committed to various social justice movements.</p> <p>In that context, one of my primary goals in teaching a New Testament introduction course titled “Interpreting the Gospels” is to help my students understand the diversity of both the canonical and non‐canonical Gospels – and the significance of that diversity. I focus on the differences and particularities of each of the gospels (as well as some of the similarities), aiming at understanding why they are different from each other and what the implications of this are. In other words, what is the significance of the differences between the Gospels for our interpretations as well as for our lives? By the end of the semester, I hope that my students recognize the significant value of the differences; not only among the gospels but also among people. In this vein, I also highlight the importance of using multiple lenses when engaging the Bible. Likewise, I emphasize the importance of recognizing and respecting the value of multiple interpretations of biblical texts.</p> <p>Each year I have to make a difficult decision about whether using an introductory textbook serves my students better than not using an introductory textbook. I worry about using textbooks in the introductory course because, no matter how strongly they claim to offer objective information and interpretation, they cannot avoid presenting a particular theological or ideological product reflecting the author's particular context and community. I worry that a textbook, as the first scholarly book students encounter, will be too strong a voice and unduly influence my students' own interpretations. Several times, I have not used an introductory textbook and instead have had students read different introductory remarks from various biblical dictionaries and commentaries.</p> <p>Why then would I even consider using a theological commentary, which, I would assume, must promote a single, very focused theological lens for reading the Gospel of Mark?</p> <p>That said, I was happily surprised by the quality of Bill Placher's commentary on Mark, in which the author does in fact engage multiple interpretive methods in his theological interpretation. He is very concerned with the imperial role of America. That is the context of his reading; it is his primary lens. In the Introduction he compares the Roman empire's execution of Jesus with the empire of the United States's killing of innocent civilians in Iraq. Having made that comparison, he moves to the contemporary circumstances and challenges faced by the church. What he has provided is not just a theological commentary but an ethical commentary of Mark – a perspective which I also highlight in my classes.</p> <p>So, surprisingly, I think I would use Placher's commentary as a textbook in my class. He is in conversation with a number of interpretive perspectives. He not only uses traditional interpretive methods such as historical criticism and narrative criticism, he also engages with political, feminist, and postcolonial interpreters. I would use Placher's commentary as a textbook because my students could find a model here of how to honor multiple interpretations.</p> <p>To honor multiple interpretations does not mean to completely lose one's own perspective. It does not mean that I have to lose my own identity as someone who belongs to a particular denominational or religious community. My interpretation may come to a different conclusion from others' – as this author clearly comes to particular conclusions. This also would be a great lesson for my students.</p> <hd id="AN0084578608-6">Discussion</hd> <p>Rebecca Rine (University of Virginia): I am interested in commentary as a genre – especially ancient commentary, but also contemporary commentary. I wonder if any of you might comment on the practicality of using commentary in the classroom. Is it something you assign just like any other assigned reading? Do you have specific techniques that you would use to engage your classroom when reading a commentary? Have you required students to write their own commentary, perhaps after reading something like Placher's commentary, or perhaps several commentaries side by side? Do you think this would be advisable?</p> <p>Daniel Patte: I will often have my students prepare a commentary on a specific passage, usually with a choice between several commentaries as a resource. The assignment requires them to show the choices they have made by comparing their commentary with others, and to reflect on these choices. The fact that a commentary such as Placher's quotes a lot of commentaries does not mean that he has not “figured out” Mark. He has. He is presenting one interpretation of Mark. That is why I would place Placher's commentary beside all the others. In the assignment, students are required to choose four commentaries. Even the undergraduates have to do this, which is quite a challenge for them, but they work on it from the beginning of the semester. Two thirds of the semester is devoted to this project, which they work on with the rest of their colleagues in class.</p> <p>Cynthia Kittredge: Reading this commentary made me think about at least two different meanings of the word “commentary.” In New Testament scholarship “commentary” in some cases means an encyclopedic or authoritative volume to which you go for answers. Alternatively, Placher's commentary appears to be a theological reflection and interpretation of a text from beginning to end. That, it seems to me, is a very different kind of genre. I am quite interested in this latter category of theological commentary.</p> <p>I am thinking about possibly asking students to write a reflection on a passage, in this genre. We no longer write exegesis papers at my school. That was the goal of all biblical studies courses when I was doing my MDiv degree. Today we require MDiv students to write sermons. Or we have them write study guides in which we either give them questions to investigate or ask them to discover their own questions and then figure out where to find the appropriate methodological commentary to answer them. I think it would be interesting to ask students to do a reflection on a passage in the style of this kind of theological commentary. But it is very hard to get my students away from the idea that the Anchor Bible Commentary (Yale University Press) will answer their questions. I press them: well, which volume? in which book? by which author? But for them, it is Oxford or it is Anchor – and they are seen as a single, huge, authoritative, source.</p> <p>Rebecca Rine: I am curious about the extent to which you need to intentionally model how to read commentaries. For example: How do you approach a commentary? How do you present it? How does it function in the class?</p> <p>Seung Ai Yang: In my classes I emphasize that every commentary is actually an interpretation. And it does not stand alone. In fact, even the collection of canonical texts is actually comprised of interpretations of earlier existing scriptures. So a commentary is, in a sense, collections of interpretations. Keeping in mind the issue of how to use a commentary in our classrooms, I will address the question. If it is a smaller elective class focused on a particular gospel, I give each student a chance to select one or two commentaries. In class, each student is responsible for representing the specific commentaries they chose. In this way, students confirm that the particular ideas of each commentary are reflective of particular perspectives. I also emphasize that students should remember that even the essays in biblical dictionaries are actually interpretations, and are not purely objective information. I tell them that while they are valuable resources students need to know that each essay is provided from a particular author's theological, philosophical, and ideological perspective. So when I use commentaries in class, I use multiple commentaries to engage diverse perspectives and interpretations of the same text.</p> <p>Kenneth Ngwa: At Drew, students still write exegetical papers. In the introductory class I co‐teach, we have what we call an “exegetical skills course” that runs concurrently with the class. We identify a number of specific texts and then require students to select one to read over and over again in conjunction with different commentaries throughout the semester. They work with a librarian to learn research skills and write reflection papers. By the end of the semester they produce an exegetical paper which summarizes their understandings of that text. Our goal is to help students develop the skills of making choices by comparing translations and commentaries. We ask them to address why particular authors prefer a particular translation over another.</p> <p>One exercise I have used in class is to compare two translations of a single passage, for example Proverbs 30:1b. The New Revised Standard Version reads: “I am weary O God. I am weary O God. How can I prevail?” But the King James version says: “The man spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal.” I have them read these two translation aloud in class, and it astounds them. How can the same text be translated in such startling different ways? This provides an opportunity to briefly talk about text‐critical work, particularly language (here, Hebrew) and translation. We discuss what translators do when they translate: that is, they interpret. This helps students to understand that when they read this or any other passage in church on Sunday they are reading a translation, which itself is a useful interpretive project.</p> <p>Amy Plantinga Pauw (Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary): I was the original co‐editor of the series with Bill Placher. It was our intention that every volume in the series would begin with an essay about “Why this book, and why now.” That was a deliberate theological choice – that what we mean by theological interpretation always has to be related to the current situation in the current context. There are obviously different ways of doing theological commentaries but for us it was always a matter of harnessing the resources of both the biblical text and the long tradition of reflection on that text, to the current situation. I am curious to what degree introductory essays such as this would have a place in the way you teach biblical studies courses. Would it help you provoke students to ask “Why this text, why now?” Would that be the kind of assignment you would consider?</p> <p>Cynthia Kittredge: That sort of exercise is very important in our preaching course. We have students start by analyzing the factors that are affecting their interpretation of the text. Sometimes there are things you want to set aside and sometimes there are things you want to critique in your exploration of the text – for example: ideas of sickness in the healing stories. And then students need to come back out of the text and speak back to our world and its notions of medicine (to continue the example). So for preaching, when that is the explicit exercise, it is absolutely critical to do a lot of analysis of the world in which you are living.</p> <p>Nadine Pence (Wabash Center): I am trying to piece together what each of you say are the learning goals for your students. As I listened, Daniel Patte articulated the goal of students becoming responsible, careful, readers. For Seung Ai Yang, the goal was for students to become interpreters who can see multiple interpretations; Kenneth Ngwa focused on students becoming intentional interpreters and ethical, communal readers.</p> <p>I had a harder time naming your goal, Cynthia, but I wondered if you would be comfortable with performative language. Would you think your goal is for students to become performative readers? That as they interpret the text for sermons, they become hearers of “the Word?”</p> <p>Cynthia Kittredge: We work a lot with students to help them analyze what the particular text wants the reader to do, and what your sermon wants a person who hears it to do. My own intellectual work straddles the fence a bit between a very responsible intellectual or academic reading and the more performative emphasis that we teach in class. We perform texts of Mark now, and those performances actually show amazing research by the students to figure out a way to embody their understanding of the text in their performance of it.</p> <p>Seung Ai Yang: One of the common learning goals of all of my biblical studies courses is to help the students understand the importance of the role of interpretation in human history. The Bible has been invoked in the killing of so many people throughout history. And, at the same time, the Bible has given life to so many. By the end of class, I hope that my students have the capacity to ethically engage the Bible, which is not only a tremendously dangerous but also powerfully transformative text.</p> <p>Gary Phillips: This question is addressed to Amy Plantinga Pauw. In the introduction to the series at the beginning of the volume, you talk almost exclusively about the authors: what the authors seek to do, who the authors are in conversation with. There is only one line that I see that speaks directly to the reader. So, what do you want to be done by the reader of these volumes, by the students? What is the learning goal for the students?</p> <p>Amy Plantinga Pauw: We hope these commentaries will provide an example of what it looks like to wrestle seriously with a particular text of scripture in theological conversation. We are quite clear that each of these volumes is only a single example of this sort of theological wrestling. There are other responsible theological readings of these texts. We do hope to model a kind of serious wrestling with scripture that takes into account on the one hand a long theological tradition and on the other hand the pressing issues and urgencies of today.</p> <p>Bill and I used to joke that if the series does nothing else it will force the theologians writing for the series to spend a lot more time with the Bible. That in itself would be a worthy goal. We hope that some of our readers are theologians who will take seriously the idea of wrestling with an entire text of scripture, rather than the usual à la carte approach that theologians tend to favor. There is something intellectually and ethically demanding in being forced to deal with an entire text of scripture and not picking favorite verses here and there. So we hope that some of our readers will be fellow theologians as well as preachers and biblical scholars.</p> <p>Paul Myhre (Wabash Center): It seemed to me that the primary learning goal for each of you on the panel was to encourage students to wrestle with the theological meaning of the text. I would like to hear a little bit more about that.</p> <p>Seung Ai Yang: Bill Placher, as author of this commentary, includes many different voices of interpretation on specific passages of Mark. He sometimes creates a sort of dialogue among these different biblical interpreters (whether they are biblical scholars, or theologians, or other religious people). I think this book is a good model for my students showing how various voices wrestle with the text. It models how they might also wrestle with the text.</p> <p>Cynthia Kittredge: My students tend to want to find an author who “gets it.” They are looking for a single reliable interpreter. But I do not want to short‐circuit the processes, the “messing around” in the text. I want students to see the repetition of the word “hodos,” and the parable of the seed. I want to keep my students away from seeing other people's answers too soon.</p> <p>It would be very interesting to approach one of my theological colleagues with this book and see if he or she would like to teach a chapter on Mark together. We could highlight the different approaches of biblical scholarship and theology and show what each discipline has to offer to the other – so that the students (and my colleagues) do not see them as two completely different conversations, with one superior to the other.</p> <p>Gary Phillips: I want to follow up Paul's question with Cynthia. You had a clear articulation of your student learning goals: you want students to wrestle. And Amy, you too said something like that; you want there to be a wrestling on the part of theologians. So my question to both of you is: what is the next step? Presumably one stops wrestling at some point – because you are fatigued. And then you have to do something, right? So what do you envision to be the next step? I think that this is course specific; and it is commentary specific too.</p> <p>Cynthia Kittredge: Well I like us to wrestle and have insights into the text together as a class in the room. The insights that you get when you are wrestling together are much more memorable than the ones you get when you read alone.</p> <p>In the case of our preaching class, the students do have to settle. They have to figure out something that they are going to proclaim, and they have to proclaim it convincingly. They have to believe it. There is a very immediate goal, a product, an activity that signals that the wrestling is over. But often the sermon itself has some of the wrestling in it. It gives voice to some of those complexities.</p> <p>Nadine Pence: I would agree that the sermon itself is a wrestling. If you approach the text when preaching it on another day, the wrestling may bring different results.</p> <p>Daniel Patte: I would say that a sermon in which you have stopped the wrestling would be a very bad sermon. Inviting the congregation to wrestle with the text is important. Otherwise, you get a silencing of the Bible in the church, when it is presented with a fixed and complete interpretation. Instead, here is one wrestling for today. You are invited to continue wrestling with it in different ways each time you read it, because you are in a different context with other theological issues.</p> <p>Nadine Pence: The other part of that image that I think is quite striking is that sometimes you stop wrestling because you are injured. Sometimes a particular text takes us to insights and reflections that cause us to be dislocated. Then you need a period of recovery and healing. Thus you are in a differently located body when you re‐approach the text. The metaphor actually gives some nice ways of blessing the struggle, which are also scriptural.</p> <p>Daniel Patte: I would push even further. Of course, you need to wrestle until you are wounded. Yes, but you are wounded precisely at the moment when you are receiving your blessing from the text. I am thinking of Jacob, of course.</p> <p>Gary Phillips: What about for undergraduate students? Kenneth, you have taught undergraduates. We have been using this language of woundedness and speaking of preparing our students to preach. Is that the next step for undergraduates? Or are there other next steps that come in your teaching with materials like this?</p> <p>Kenneth Ngwa: Yes, I think there are other steps that accompany this woundedness and wrestling. I would mention in this instance Walter Brueggemann's concepts of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation, which he applies to the structure of biblical laments.</p> <p>Before teaching at Drew Theological School, I taught in Religion departments at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and at Wabash College, a liberal arts college in Indiana. Teaching students for whom religious studies were either part of their liberal arts education or a stepping stone towards formal training for pastoral ministry provided a context for thinking more broadly about “ministry” and how religious studies fit into the larger frame of the humanities. Some students were interested in taking up teaching positions in high schools and community colleges. For these students, there was a different kind of wrestling, although with the same level of ethical implication as the wrestling associated with preaching. I am thinking here of the traditions associated with teaching that make up part of Moses's wrestling with God in the holy place in Exodus 4:12. For my students in the context of liberal arts education, the wrestling that became part of their sense of civic engagement revolved around questions such as: Why and how is religion important for understanding some human behavior? What is the relationship between religion and education itself, given that a good number of the higher institutes of learning are historically rooted in religious denominations? For students preparing for ministry or already working in congregations, the wrestling is immediately relevant to what they do in church.</p> <p>I will often give my students a series of questions ahead of time to encourage them to think about how they read the biblical text in church and what their expectations are for reading it in class. Will it be similar or different, and how? Then I encourage them to revisit these questions as we move through the material.</p> <p>I think there are different kinds of wrestling. Students who come out of traditions that are rather dogmatic wrestle differently. Students who begin to feel that those traditions are so dogmatic that they are actually oppressive go through a different sort of wrestling because now they are trying to free themselves (rather than trying to hold onto something). They often feel quite excited when they see through our reading and discussions that there can be multiple equally credible and inspiring interpretations and that they do not have to be so dogmatic about everything they believe. For them that is very freeing. For other students, especially those coming out of violent, traumatic experiences and who are seeking clarity, such multiplicity can be troubling. In both cases, the woundedness and wrestling require different responses and processes of “reorientation.”</p> <p>International students go through a different sort of wrestling. For those who experience the Bible partly as a colonizing text, different sorts of questions arise: “Is this a text that requires me to do certain things because there is a colonizing power standing over me watching? Or is there a sense in which I can actually push back successfully?” The wrestling is therefore overtly political. We have noted that Bill Placher's introduction raises the issue of colonialism. For some international students, the context of empire frames the way they think about the question of wrestling – from the other side. That is a question that I find really interesting because it inhabits the intersection between church and state, performed through the colonial project and articulated by those who suffered from those policies.</p> <p>Daniel Patte: I too have seen international students struggle this way. I also have Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu students. I see them wrestling in a very interesting way. They raise all kinds of questions for the rest of the group: “We see that you do not do what the Bible says, so what does it actually mean for you?” They force the questions of the contextual character of the text and of its interpretation. Of course, they form their own view of the scripture. When you have someone in class who is reading the Bible as they read the Koran, then you get very different readings of the text.</p> <p>Kenneth Ngwa: I have a Muslim student in my introductory class. Every time he makes a comment, he brings a very different perspective. That is why I assign Jewish commentaries in addition to the usual Christian commentaries of a text. They often provide a very different way of wrestling with the text.</p> <p>Gary Phillips: As teachers of the Bible, we dare not underestimate the degree to which an encounter with the biblical text and the questions it presses can unsettle and alter a student. It can lead to serious struggle. We have used the metaphor of wrestling: wrestling with the biblical text; wrestling with its questions; wresting with commentators on the text; wrestling with ourselves. If the biblical Jacob is the model, such labor may leave us deprived of sleep and marked, perhaps with a permanent limp that changes our gait, and makes movement and perspective neither easy nor the same again. Are we conscious of the stakes for students, that engagement with the Bible can bring both blessing and curse? Are we deliberate and careful in the way we invite students into this work knowing that much hangs in the balance dealing with life and death issues?</p> <p>Bill's commentary helps me reflect on these questions. If commentary is one way we enable students to wrestle with the biblical text, we do so not always knowing in advance what will be the end, how it will leave us (maybe running afraid from the tomb with the women, or writing a commentary!), what the effects will be either for teacher or student. While the end may be uncertain, what we do know and can promise our students is that thoughtful engagement with the Bible invites a lifetime of searching for answers to questions that defy easy or maybe any resolution. Commentary is a concrete next step; to use Bill's words it is a means of tossing the textual ball to others to catch, to live with the story by keeping it alive. Commentary on the Bible, as much as Shakespeare's works, engages our most basic human impulse to make meaning, to struggle with the big questions, and to respond humanly in ways inflected by our different experiences. That is the promised end.</p> <aug> <p>By Gary Phillips; Daniel Patte; Cynthia Kittredge; Seung Ai Yang and Kenneth Ngwa</p> </aug> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Using Bible Commentaries in the Classroom – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Phillips%2C+Gary%22">Phillips, Gary</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Patte%2C+Daniel%22">Patte, Daniel</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Kittredge%2C+Cynthia%22">Kittredge, Cynthia</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Teaching+Theology+%26+Religion%22"><i>Teaching Theology & Religion</i></searchLink>. Jan 2013 16(1):52-65. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/ – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: PhysDesc Label: Physical Description Group: PhysDesc Data: PDF – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 14 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2013 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Descriptive – Name: Audience Label: Education Level Group: Audnce Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Liberal+Arts%22">Liberal Arts</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Biblical+Literature%22">Biblical Literature</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teaching+Methods%22">Teaching Methods</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Conferences+%28Gatherings%29%22">Conferences (Gatherings)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Clergy%22">Clergy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Undergraduate+Students%22">Undergraduate Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22College+Faculty%22">College Faculty</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Theological+Education%22">Theological Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Discussion%22">Discussion</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teacher+Attitudes%22">Teacher Attitudes</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/teth.12006 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 1368-4868 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: This discussion of the goals and methods of teaching biblical literature is an edited transcription of a panel recorded at the 2010 Society for Biblical Literature conference. The panelists were asked to reflect on William Placher's recently published theological commentary on Mark as an example or test case of how one might use a biblical commentary as a classroom resource. Karl Barth wrote that insofar as their usefulness to pastors goes, most modern commentaries are "no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary." What value might commentaries have for our students, whether future pastors or undergraduates in the liberal arts? While the panel consisted of teachers of undergraduates as well as theological students, the emphasis of the presentations and subsequent discussion focused mostly on theological formation. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2013 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ996189 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/teth.12006 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 14 StartPage: 52 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Liberal Arts Type: general – SubjectFull: Biblical Literature Type: general – SubjectFull: Teaching Methods Type: general – SubjectFull: Conferences (Gatherings) Type: general – SubjectFull: Clergy Type: general – SubjectFull: Undergraduate Students Type: general – SubjectFull: College Faculty Type: general – SubjectFull: Theological Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Discussion Type: general – SubjectFull: Teacher Attitudes Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Using Bible Commentaries in the Classroom Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Phillips, Gary – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Patte, Daniel – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Kittredge, Cynthia IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2013 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 1368-4868 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 16 – Type: issue Value: 1 Titles: – TitleFull: Teaching Theology & Religion Type: main |
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