Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

Contextualization as an Ethical Practice: Part 2—Unpacking “Machine-Made” Biblical Knowledge

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The cultural iconic status of the Bible in Western society can easily be harnessed for oppressive purposes. This demands an ethical obligation to biblical interpretation that scientific historical methods alone are unable to fulfill….

Through contextualization, we are drawn to uncover the social beliefs underwriting the default system present within the field of biblical studies….

Contextualization as an Ethical Practice: Part 1—The Socialized Body of the Biblical Scholar

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For seminary students, lingering too long in the ancient historical distance can lead them to trivialize the text’s contemporary social relevance. Hence, how do we encourage and sustain discussions about pressing social issues alongside lessons on scientific biblical interpretive methods?…

Teaching the Bible in Texas: An Archive Possessed?

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Three things are sacred in Texas, its history, the Bible, and football. Here the Alamo is a pilgrimage site, and High school football is almost equal in importance to Sunday church attendance.

This past summer, I integrated Texas History and the Bible in a dream elective course titled, “A Borderlands Reading of Deuteronomistic History.” Central to the course was a reading of Joshua to 2 Kings side by side with Texas borderlands history from the late nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century. The primary topics of discussion were the intersecting themes of empire, conquest, exile, family, gender, and violence….

 

Archive as a Context for Teaching the Bible

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Axiomatic in my teaching of the Bible is the notion that all texts are produced in a context.

For most of my beginning students, such a notion poses little threat to their faith convictions. Even the “more controversial” claim of non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch wanes in intensity after a few lectures on redaction history.

Their uneasiness, however, lingers not with arguments on a text’s particular historical context but with the claim that all readings of the biblical text are the outcome of historical processes. Said differently, no reading, informed or uninformed, takes place in a social vacuum.