The World of the Old Testament
September 2nd, 2008
OldTestamentTheology
This Week’s Plan
Monday OFF - Labor Day
Tuesday Review; Assign Oral Reading Project
Wednesday Test 1 - Abbreviations, Covenants, Tools, Intro to Theology
Thursday Reading Assignment data; Intro to OT History; Storyline
Friday Oral Reading Assignment
*Coming Up:*
Oral Bible Reading Project will continue Monday for those of you who didn’t go Friday.
What We’ve Done This Week in Bible - 1st Quarter Week 4
Friday We did most of the Oral Bible Reading projects today, the rest we’ll get to Monday. You guys did really well for the most part, with a little room for improvement (there always is…). We’ll dive in more deeply to the OT World next week.
Thursday We went over some of the things that make for a good public reading of Scripture, which we’ll be doing tomorrow. Download a new Oral Bible Reading project sheet here.
Wednesday Today we took our test on Intro to Old Testament Theology.
Tuesday Today we reviewed for our Unit 1 Test tomorrow and introduced a reading assignment which we’ll do Friday.
Monday OFF
1st Quarter Week 3
Friday By all accounts a non-eventful day. We handed in our projects, took a quiz and talked about our life goals and dreams.
Thursday I handed out a packet on the “God” article in the Nave’s Topical Bible, which we used to more or less look at what attributes of God get the most ink. These things are really important to God because in the Bible the things that are supposed to pop off the page are the things which are repeated over and over. This gives us a clue to what God thinks is important for us to know. We also talked about the way in which we are going to do theology this year as well as the goal of it: to know better who God is and what He’s about. Why should we know this? The same reason people have been trying to know it for the last 4,000 years: so we can have a touchstone against which to measure ourselves. C.S. Lewis said “No man can know a crooked line unless he has some idea of a straight line.” (N.B. The completed class notes are in PDF format on the Class Documents page.)
Wednesday The discussion continues on how we are to know God. By using how someone would know us as a model, we are starting to ask these questions of God. For instance, if someone were to really know what we’re about, they’d have to look at how we describe ourselves, our relationships, our choices under pressure, and our goals & dreams. Likewise, if we are to know God, these are four pretty good places to start looking.
Tuesday Today we talked some more about what Theology is, and basically, it is this: thinking and learning who God is and what He’s about. We’ll use the OT this year to do that, but certainly God is not relegated to revealing Himself there. As a metaphor, we spent some time poring over the question “For somebody to really know me, they must know ___________.” More tomorrow.
Monday Today we recapped and processed our time in the Library and talked about what we’ve learned and how we’ve learned it. Couple of important things to remember about library research: 1) Know what resource does what 2) Keywords are your friends 3) Subjects are your friends. We also started our notes on Intro to Theology, including some basic etymology of the word and some working definitions. We’re trying to get a handle on this animal so we can use it to learn about God in the weeks to come.
1st Quarter Week 2
Friday We finished up our time in the library this week as we were working on our Scavenger Hunt Project. We’ll be back in the class room next week, but you’ll still need to go to the library to finish it up by Friday.
Thursday Today we were in the library doing the first part of our first project of the year: the Theological Scavenger Hunt. We also took a quiz over the OT Chart of Covenants.
Wednesday We talked a little bit about some of the Library Tools for Theological Research but mainly spent time reading our bibles and talked about the WHY behind the map. Many peoples and military powers came and went in the course of the Old Testament, most notably Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. What’s interesting is that Canaan is at a geographically pivotal point because you had to go through it to get anywhere from anywhere else in the Ancient Near East. That made it a valuable piece of real estate in which God tells the story of his people. Past the Old Testament, the Greeks and the Romans both make huge contributions to God’s Story by bringing unified language and a highway system, respectively. These two key elements along with God’s people in Canaan converge to lay the foundation for a VERY important message that would come from Jerusalem. The question, however, is not “What was the message?” but rather, “WHO was the message…”
Tuesday We continued our discussion of the salient points of the Map of the OT World. Once we get all the WHATS down, we’ll start talking about the WHYS, which are way more interesting anyway.
Monday We checked our supplies, took our first quiz over the Abbreviations of the OT Books, and started going over the Map of the OT World.
1st Quarter Week 1
Tuesday-Friday
For the first week, we just spent some time getting to know each other, reading some favorite passages and knocking the rust off our familiarity with the Old Testament. Nothing earth-shattering here, but we’re starting out slow.
Duncan Campbell - Upcoming Speaking Engagements
Sun., Sept. 14 Friendship Church of Christ - Olive Branch, MS
